In People

Biography

Birke Häcker is the Linklaters Professor of Comparative Law.

She was previously a Fellow of All Souls College, a Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance in Munich, and a Lecturer in Law at Ludwig-Maximilian-University Munich (awarded the Therese von Bayern Prize 2015). As an undergraduate, she obtained a dual legal education, reading Jurisprudence at Oxford as well as German law at the Universities of Tübingen and Bonn. Her Oxford DPhil is on comparative private law (Consequences of Impaired Consent Transfers: A Structural Comparison of English and German Law, published 2009, republished 2013). She is qualified to practise in Germany.

Professor Häcker is a Fellow of Brasenose College, Deputy Director of Oxford University's Institute of European and Comparative Law (IECL), Council Member of the British Association of Comparative Law (BACL), Fellow of the European Law Institute (ELI), a Research Affiliate at the Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance, an Academic Member of the Chancery Bar Association, and (during 2017-2018) a Visiting Professor at the University of Paris 1, Panthéon-Sorbonne.

Her main research interests lie in the field of private law, with a strong comparative and historical focus. This includes especially contract, tort, restitution for unjust enrichment, property, trusts, and succession, but also extends to adjoining areas of commercial and company law, aspects of tax law, as well as the principles governing the conflict of laws.

At Oxford, Professor Häcker teaches Comparative Law and European Private Law.

B Häcker, 'La Troisième Jeunesse du Code Civil: A German Lawyer Looks at the Reform of French Contract Law' in J Cartwright and S Whittaker (eds), The Code Napoléon Rewritten: French Contract Law after the 2016 Reforms (Hart Publishing 2017)

B Häcker, 'What’s in a Will? – Examining the Modern Approach towards the Interpretation and Rectification of Testamentary Instruments' in B Häcker and C Mitchell (eds), Current Issues in Succession Law (Hart Publishing 2016)

B Häcker, 'Divergence and Convergence in the Common Law – Lessons from the Ius Commune' (2015) 131 Law Quarterly Review 424